I’ve been listening to a podcast from Yale University discussing the Bible.  There are definite similarities between the Babylonian story of  Gilgamesh and the stories of Adam and Noah.  Some people, such as Bishop Rick, have said

I think it is accurate to state that the flood story in the bible is both myth and a forgery. It is obviously a myth for reasons too numerous to mention here, but it is also copied from other cultures/religions, thus making it a forgery.

It could very well be a myth.  While some scholars believe the story is a myth, National Geographic put together a documentary called “In Search for Noah’s Flood”.  They discuss various flood stories, and make the case that a large, localized flood must have influenced these various cultures to write of this flood.  While there is no proof of a flood, it seems like a plausible explanation.

Recently I discussed a couple of sites in the Dead Sea region that some people believe are the sites of Sodom and Gomorrah.  While some people love to claim the Bible is actually a collection of myths, Dr. Carole Fontaine of the Andover Newton Theological School said, “Archeologists often find themselves hooted and hollered out of town, when they first suggest things like, ‘I’ve found Troy, or look, we’ve found Sodom and Gomorrah.’  But history has shown that in fact, the more you dig, the more you find.  It’s amazing how accurate the Bible sometimes turns out to be.”

Speaking of hooting and hollering, John Hamer recently recorded a famous comment regarding Book of Mormon archaeology.  He said,

The scholarly consensus on the alleged antiquity of the Book of Mormon was expressed way back in 1973 in Dialogue by Michael D. Coe, among the foremost Mayanist scholars, who wrote: “As far as I know there is not one professionally trained archaeologist, who is not a Mormon, who sees any scientific justification for believing the historicity of The Book of Mormon, and I would like to state that there are quite a few Mormon archaeologists who join this group”

The best Book of mormon archaeological site seems to be Nahom.  I’ve previously blogged about Nahom, and Daniel C. Peterson called it a “bulls eye”.  In the video called Journey of Faith (distributed by FAIR), a few BYU scholars state,

Daniel C. Peterson, Professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic, BYU, “The finding of Nahom strikes me as just a tremendously significant discovery.”

Noel B Reynolds, director of FARMS, BYU, “The gazetteers of Joseph Smith’s day listed no such place.”

Peterson, “What it really is, is a kind of prediction by the Book of Mormon, or something that we ought to find.”

William J Hamblin, Professor of Middle Eastern History, BYU, “Now the chances of finding that exact name from the exact time, in that exact place, by random chance, are just astronomical.”

Peterson, “And to find it in the right location, at the right time, is a really striking bulls eye for the book and there are those who say the book has no archeological substantiation. That’s a spectacular substantiation right there, it seems to me.  Something that would have been unexpected. It’s so unlikely that Joseph Smith could have woven into his story on his own.”

Hamblin, “The Book of Mormon has text, has made a complex prediction and modern archeology actually confirms that prediction.”

Peterson, “It’s a direct bulls-eye, as precise as you could wish it to be.”

I don’t think non-Mormon scholars are as impressed with the site as Peterson, but non-Bible believing scholars aren’t impressed with Sodom and Gomorrah either.  So, must we always believe that lack of evidence argues against historicity of the Bible or Book or Mormon, or is there reason to believe that some of these stories that scholars call myths, forgeries, or pious frauds really might have some historical use?  Is it true that “the more you dig, the more you find?”

Here’s the original Press Release.

In his book, Wright demonstrates that the Ten Commandments and related covenants in Exodus 20-23 were plagiarized from the Laws of Hammurabi, an ancient Babylonian text, and were copied much later than the time of Moses–rather from the time of the Babylonian exile in 740-640 BCE. “The study offers significant new evidence demonstrating that a model of literary dependence is the only viable explanation for the work. … This analysis shows that the Covenant Code is primarily a creative academic work rather than a repository of laws practiced by Israelites or Judeans over the course of their history … and explores how this may relate to the development of the Pentateuch as a whole.”

Now, here is the corrected release,

In his book, Wright demonstrates that the Covenant Code of Exodus 20-23, which is part of the revelation of Mt. Sinai , was in effect borrowed from the Laws of Hammurabi, an ancient Babylonian text. From literary clues, Wright has been able to determine that the code was copied into Israelite records during the Babylonian exile of 740-640 BCE, long after the time of Moses. “The study offers significant new evidence demonstrating that a model of literary dependence is the only viable explanation for the work. … This analysis shows that the Covenant Code is primarily a creative academic work rather than a repository of laws practiced by Israelites or Judeans over the course of their history … and explores how this may relate to the development of the Pentateuch as a whole.”

So some of you may dismiss Wright–certainly he doesn’t represent Mormon thought, right?  Well, let’s check his credentials.

1. Wright formerly taught at Brigham Young University.  He was an Assistant Professor of Asian and Near Eastern Languages.
2. Wright is a Professor of Bible and Ancient Near East Studies at Brandeis University.
3. Wright is also a contributor to American Apocrypha: Essays on the Book of Mormon and New Approaches to the Book of Mormon .

I haven’t read the book, but what are your initials reactions?

8 We believe the ^aBible to be the ^bword of God as far as it is translated ^ccorrectly;

This has to be one of the most oft-quoted articles of faith by members of the LDS church.  In one of my previous posts on Scripture Literalism, the comments referred to Biblical inerrancy and literalism.  Some evangelicals believe that the Bible is both inerrant and literal, and take great issue with the Mormon stance on the Bible.  They don’t believe there are any mistranslations, and that every word in the Bible was spoken by God.  Many of these people discount any contradictions in the Bible.

The Documentary Hypothesis is a theory that seems to identify at least four different authors/editors of the first five books in the Bible (also called the Torah in Judaism, or the Pentateuch.)  I think many Mormons would find great agreement with the Documentary Hypothesis, though they might not agree with every part of the theory.

Tradition has it that Moses authored the first 5 books of the Bible.  This is somewhat problematic, because Deuteronomy records Moses death in Deuteronomy 34:5, so Moses certainly couldn’t have finished writing that book.  Obviously someone else recorded his death (though there is a Jewish tradition that Moses did actually write the words of his death, and cried while he did it.)

There is an old A&E series called Mysteries of the Bible, and one of their episodes is called “Who wrote the Bible?”  I’d like to quote some of the information referencing the Documentary Hypothesis.  I downloaded the episode from Amazon, but apparently it is no longer available for download.  The documentary starts by looking at some of the stories which are told twice in the Bible, with different (and sometimes contradictory) tellings of the story.

There are numerous examples of the same story told twice, sometimes with conflicting details.  Scholars have long referred to these as doublets.  There are two separate accounts of the creation of the world, two versions of the covenant made between God and the Patriarch Abraham, and even two distinct versions of Moses obtaining water from a rock at a place called Mirabar, during the Exodus.

In most instances of these so-called doublets, the two versions of the story each refer to God by a different name.  In the Hebrew text, sometimes the deity is referred to as Elohim, the usual Hebrew reference to God.  But in the alternative version, the term used is often used is Yahweh, or Lord.  For centuries, scholars have puzzled over the appearance of these distinct differences.

…

Richard Elliot Friedman, Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, University of California, San Diego.  “The key piece of evidence in this is that different kinds of Jews converged with each other.  So that you have doublets of stories-that proves nothing.  You have different names of God-that proves nothing.  But when all the doublets of stories line up into two groups, one of which uses one name of God, and the other uses the other name of God, consistently, then that’s strong evidence that something is going on.”

…

By the early half of the 19^th century, many scholars were convinced that the five books of Moses were written by three different authors.  The writer of the version which referred to Yahweh, was named “J” because early European translators were ignorant of the correct pronunciation of Hebrew names.  Many inadvertently referred to the name of God as Jehovah instead of Yahweh, and ironically, the name has stuck.

The author of those texts referring to God as Elohim was named “E.”  A third writer was identified as “P”.  This author was thought to be a priest, and wrote in a different style than J and E.  His passages seemed to be especially concerned with the establishment of the priesthood, after the people of Israel left Egypt.

Friedman, “All these texts are written in Hebrew, but in a different stage of Hebrew that we can identify.  Each has its own favorite terms, words that occur 50 times in P, but never occur in E or J, that sort of thing.  Each has its own style.”

The differences are immediately obvious in Hebrew, the language in which the text was originally written.  The disparities virtually disappear in the English translation.  But this example comes from the book of Exodus.  The text relates how God appeared in a burning bush.  The passage was written by J, who in Hebrew refers to God as Yahweh, or Lord.  Exodus 3:2, “And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush; and he looked and, behold, the bush burned with fire and the bush was not consumed.”

When the E writer, discusses Moses and the burning bush, the name is now only Elohim, “God”.  Exodus 3:6, “Moreover, he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.  And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.”

Subtle, though the differences may be, the texts clearly seem to reflect a compilation of sources.  In 1807, the German theologian, Wilhelm DeWitt announced the discovery of a possible fourth author.  His examination of the text indicated that the language, tone, and content of the entire book of Deuteronomy were the work of a different person to J, E, or P.  Scholars have since come to this author as D, for Deuteronomist.  Over the years, the theory has come to be known as the Documentary Hypothesis.

Friedman, “Once you have identified a text and said, ‘I think this is J, I think this is E, I think this is P, I think this is D’, then you place it up against other texts in the Bible where we have some idea of the date, and see if there is any development in the language.  It’s not just that you can tell the difference between the way I speak and the way Shakespeare did.  It’s that if you heard someone who lived in the 18^th century, you could tell that that person was somewhere halfway between Shakespeare and me.  So you can see the stages of Biblical Hebrew in growth.”

In a stunning retraction of early church intolerance toward the hypothesis and the issue of biblical authorship in 1943, Pope Pius XII, surprises religious leaders and academics alike.  He issues an edict and encourages the scholars to fully investigate the question, ‘Who wrote the Bible?’  The directive was heralded as a magna carta for Biblical study, initiating unprecedented research into the origins into the holy book.  The quest would open up how the words of the divine have traversed the centuries.

The documentary goes back to the time of Moses, and states that there were no scriptures for the Hebrews at this time.

While the 10 commandments were always in the constant possession of the people, there may have been no other written words at the time, though the Bible indicates that the scrolls of Moses may have accompanied the Israelites.  Many scholars believe that the first 5 books of the Bible had not yet been written.

After the advent of the monarchy in about 1000 BCE,  King David eventually becomes ruler, and establishes his capital at Jerusalem.  It is then, that the matter of authorship enters the story.  The king breaks with tradition, by appointing two high priests, in charge of religious affairs, instead of one.

Friedman, “It’s not so strange to have two high priests; in Israel today, there are two chief rabbis.  The problem you have is that when you have two chief priests instead of one, each one spends more time of his day sitting there trying to get rid of the other one.  ”

Not only are there two high priests, but toward the end of his reign, two of King David’s sons are vying for the throne.  It is uncertain which of them will be appointed the royal successor.  A struggle for power ensues, and this embroils the high priests.  Each one supports a different royal candidate.  When David dies, it is Solomon who is chosen to wear the crown.

Now the question is, will Solomon retain the services of both priests, or return to the traditional practice of having only one man in charge of the religious affairs.  Not surprisingly, the priest who was loyal to Solomon and his candidacy was chosen.  At the same time, the second high priest is removed from power and banished from the kingdom.  “And unto Abiathar the priest said the king, Get thee to Anathoth, to thine own field, for thou art worthy of death.  So Solomon thrust out Abiathar from being priest unto the Lord.” 1 Kings 2:26

Thus the priest retained by Solomon retains an exclusive role.  He and his assistants would soon take on new responsibilities as the king begins constructing the first great temple in Jerusalem.  The deposed priest and his followers enviously watch from their place of banishment.  They are now cut off from any possible new duties in the temple.

Friedman, “They had no place in the royal kingdom in Jerusalem, and so a priest of that priestly house, initiated the rebellion that ultimately led to the formation of the kingdom of Israel in the north, and the Kingdom of Judah in the south.  They wanted their own place where they could get to be the priest as well.

Thus in 922 BCE, the ten northerly tribes sever their ties from Jerusalem, and succession splinters the nation in two: Israel in the north, and Judah in the south.  So two kingdoms born of a nation, oppose one another in an uneasy truce.

Friedman, “Each had its own king, each had its on traditions, its own places of worship.  At the same time, we’re talking about a region that’s the same size as a large American county, so people were close to each other, people had relatives north and south, they both spoke the same language, and they both had the same ancestors of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and events in Egypt, and events at Mount Sinai, and so it is thought that each kingdom produced its sacred text, or at least one person living in each kingdom produced his version of the sacred text.”

If this is so, is it possible that different versions of the Bible were taking place at the same time?

Friedman, “It’s as if in America during the Civil War, a historian in the north, and a historian in the south each wrote a history of North America.  They would cover a lot of the same events and some different events, and they would tell it from their own perspective.

Daniel Smith-Christopher, Professor of Hebrew Bible, Loyola Marymount University, “We think that the J material was first gathered together under King Solomon.  It represents Solomon’s attempt to gather up the stories of a people, to knit them together in a coherent narrative, to tell the story about how the people of Israel came to be a people.  So it became a kind of national epic.  Now here’s one of the interesting mysteries:  was it an official national epic?  Some scholars say, the majority I think, would say that Solomon commissioned this document to be written.”

In answer to Solomon and his history of the people of Judah, the people of the northern Kingdom of Israel, now begin to amass their own collection of historical stories.

Christopher, “What they want to do is they want to add to this material that is more northern in orientation.  So they add material, and we think that this material is what we call E, because they tend to use the word Elohim for God.  Now we have somewhat more sophisticated theological stories.  But interestingly enough, we also have stories that tend to emphasize the significance of the second son.  Many people who read Genesis ask, ‘how come it’s always the second son that comes out better?’  Isaac was after Ishmael, Jacob, Cain and Abel, I mean all of these stories seem to emphasize the second son as the important one, or the preferred son.  It very well could be that the northern kingdom, after their break, wanted to emphasize the second son because in a sense they were the second son.   They were the breakaway kingdom.  So, they wanted to portray themselves as the preferred of the two.

Unlike the Bible’s favored second son, however, the Kingdom of Israel slips into the grip of paganism.  As time passes, people begin to worship Canaanite gods.  They would suffer a long and difficult history under 19 kings, eight of whom would die violently.  Despite the warnings of prophets, moral decay and corruption continue to enslave the people.

Then seven and a half centuries before the birth of Christ, the prophecies come true.  An invading Assyrian army sweeps in from the north and conquers Israel.  Forever scattering the 10 tribes to the winds, never to be seen or heard from again.

….

But an unremitting spiritual downfall has now gripped Judah too.  Without any consolidated religious precepts, no laws, no sacred texts, Paganism becomes rife throughout the land, until King Josiah takes the throne.  He tries to usher in change, by outlawing idol worship, and by a return to the holy covenant made with God at Mount Sinai.

Christopher, “Josiah was the young king who, as soon as he comes to the throne, decides that he wants to reform the religion of the people towards a more spiritual attachment to Yahweh, the national god.  So Josiah starts this campaign:  he even cleans up the temple, he wants to re-employ the people in reconstructing the temple and making it more glorious, and making it more spiritual.  Well, along the way, they discover a book.”

While cleaning out the buildings, the king’s high priests find a temple scroll deep within the temple vaults.  “And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan, the scribe, I have found a book of the Law, in the house of the Lord.  And Hilkiah gave the book to the scribe, and he read it” 2 Kings 22:8

Friedman, “The document that Hilkiah is understood to have read to Josiah on that date is thought by many of us to be the laws of Deuteronomy.  They are laws that say that you should worship God in only one place.  So Josiah destroys all the other places.  These are laws that say that you should not have pagan worship, so he destroys idols, and removes pagan worship from his country.  He is the king that follows that law code, it’s an extraordinary group of laws from ritual matters down to sacrifice to moral matters of how you should treat one another, that you should be just, that you shouldn’t oppress a widow, or an orphan.  They should take care of the poor-it’s an extraordinary body of laws.

Some contemporary Biblical scholars regard the supposed discovery of the Book of Deutoronomy with skepticism.

Christopher, “Was Josiah genuinely shocked at finding the Book of Deutronomy in the temple or was this perhaps the first Academy Award performance recorded in history?  Did Josiah in fact know that that book was in the temple, and that if he assigned his people to begin cleaning it up, that they would find it.  Many scholars suggest that Josiah was in on planting the book in the first place.  What better way to push forward his reform campaign, than to plant a book that suggests that his campaign is based on the very laws of Moses themselves?”

The laws reveal that the people had deviated from their faith.  The author of the book was clearly writing from that perspective, and was concerned with where society may be heading.

Friedman, “He writes in a very definite, observable, style that you can see in Deuteronomy, and see in 2 Kings, and you see it in one other place in the Bible, it’s in the prose of the prophet Jeremiah.  So, I have suggested the likelihood that the same person is the author of the prose parts of the Book of Jeremiah and the history that runs from Deuteronomy to 2 Kings. ”

The Bible tells us that the person responsible for writing much of Jeremiah’s work was his trusty scribe, Baruch.  “Then took Jeremiah another scroll, and gave it to Baruch the scribe, the son of Naraiah.” Jeremiah 36:32

Could Baruch, the son of Nariah, have been more than a mere scribe?  Could he also have written the Book of Deuteronomy?  His work probably speaks for itself.  Many passages of text he wrote for Jeremiah are strikingly similar to words used in Deuteronomy.  Perhaps the same author may have had a hand in the writing of both books.

Deut. 10:16 “And it will be, if you really listen to Yahweh’s voice…”	Jer. 17:24 “And it will be, if you really listen to me says Yahweh…”
Deut. 4:19, 17:3 “…to all the host of the heavens…”	Jer. 8:2, 19:13 “…to all the host of the heavens…”
Deut. 4:20 “…and he brought you ought of the iron furnace, from Egypt…”	Jer 11:4 “…in the day I brought them out of the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace…”

If so, archaeology has uncovered an artifact that has finally brought us into direct contact with one of the earliest authors of the Bible.

Friedman, “We in recent years, recovered a clay seal that is now in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem which is stamped in a script that we do identify as seventh century Hebrew script, late 7^th, early 6^th century Hebrew script, and the name on that seal is Baruch, son of Nariah, the scribe.  If it’s true that Baruch is our Deuteronomistic historian, what that means is when you look at that seal, you are looking at nothing less than the autograph of one of the authors of the Bible.

Could this tiny, clay seal be the personal signature of the writer of the Book of Deuteronomy?  If it is, it is a unique object that reaches out to us beyond 26 centuries of history, the only link ever found connected to an actual author of the Bible.

…

Act V

The tangled web of history surrounding the writing of the five books of Moses may one day be completely untwined.  But a loose thread remains:  who was it who gathered the original manuscripts together?  In the course of writing a book, any book, a lengthy process of editing, and alteration is involved.  In our search, it may not be a question of who wrote the Bible, but of who re-wrote it?

Friedman, “People usually talk simply about this as if there’s four sources and as if there were only four writers and that’s misleading because even if we count those as only four writers, there’s still key editors in the stages of this.  Editors are as important as authors in the process.”

If there was an editor, who was he?  To pick up the strands we must return to the Kingdom of Judah, to the days when under a new king, Jehoiakim, the people had retrogressed once again to worshipping idols.  A prophet by the name of Jeremiah has now become one of the most outspoken critics of the weakening moral fiber of the people and he foretells their fate.  “Ye have done worse than your fathers.  Behold, ye walk everyone after the imagination of his evil heart.  Wherefore I will cast you out of this land, into a land that ye know not, neither ye, nor your fathers.” Jeremiah 16:11.

A daunting prophecy, in 586 BCE it comes true.  From Babylon, King Nebudchadnezzer’s army surged down into Judah, and lay siege to Jerusalem.  So begins more than a century of bitter exile for the people of Israel in Babylon.  But eventually, even mighty Babylon falls to a mightier power, the powerful armies of Cyrus the Great absorbed Babylon into the Persian Empire.  But Cyrus is conciliatory towards the exiled Jews.  He issues his now legendary edict of restoration, allowing the people of Israel to return to Jerusalem, and restore their temple, and their faith.

This stone cylinder, dating back to the event five and a half centuries before Christ, bears the text of Cyrus’ edict.  “The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, King of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and put it also in writing, saying, ‘Thus saith Cyrus, King of Persia, the Lord God of Heaven, hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he hath charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah.” Ezra 1:1

It is a derelict homeland to which the people return.  Much of their religious tradition has been eroded during the long years of exile.  Their faith is it a threateningly low ebb.  According to some scholars, it is time for the great redactor, the final editor of the books of Moses to enter the scene, and leave his mark.

…

In Jerusalem, a party of exiled Jews returns under the leadership of a man called Ezra, a scribe.  He sees the spiritual weakness of the people, and he resolves to reintroduce them to the ancient religion of Moses.  They have not been exposed to the Hebrew laws for almost a century.  So Ezra calls for a mass public gathering in the city.  “And Ezra the priest brought the law before the congregation, and he read therein from the morning until mid-day before the men and the women, and those who could understand.  And the ears of all people were attentive to all the words of the law.” Nehemiah 8:2

Was Ezra history’s elusive editor?  Perhaps under his guidance, various religious texts were combined and read together for the first time, forevermore to be consolidated as the five books of Moses.

Friedman, “These were laws that had not been publicly read in any way like this before.  The laws of Deuteronomy had been publicly read at least from Josiah’s time, but now we’re talking about the full five books of Moses.  We’re not talking about P or J or E.  We’re talking about the five books of Moses as people read it today.

The compilation of the texts more than 2,500 years ago was one of the most significant events in a long history of persecution and conflict for the Jews.  In the ensuing centuries, they would suffer occupation, defeat, and destruction on an unprecedented scale.  But, the essence of their religious identity would forever be enshrined in the anthology enshrined, known as the Torah, the five books of Moses.  We may never know all the mysteries of the earliest writings of the Bible, but the study of the texts, the so-called Documentary Hypothesis has provided some insights into its origins.  However, the matter is far from resolved.

The hypothesis is only one possible answer.  It is merely a concept.  There is as yet no consensus on the theory.

Christopher, “At this point, I would say that the Documentary Hypothesis is the best explanation for many of the difficulties that are presented to us by the first five books of Bible as we now have them.”

Lawrence Schiffman, Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University, “In my mind, the Documentary Hypothesis does not really solve the problem that it sets out to solve, in which case we simply get left with the question of faith.  One who wants to believe that the Torah is a divine document and given by God, can do so; one who wants to believe that it’s a human document subjected to documentary or other types of similar analysis can do so.  I think it’s a question, a mystery, to which we’ll never really know the answer.”

As Orthodox tradition has it, the five books of Moses contain the divine words of God, though were written in the hand of man.  The books that follow differ fundamentally from them.  The rest of the Hebrew Bible is generally perceived to be a series of historical documents, a chronology of people written by many authors.  So our search for authorship must now come from another perspective, posing a different set of questions.

At this point, I want to stop.  I’ll probably post again on authorship of other books of the Bible.  So what do you think of the Documentary Hypothesis?  Does it agree with the 8th Article of Faith?

Scripture is authoritative, not because it is perfect, or inerrant in every literal detail, but because it reliably keeps us grounded in God’s revelation.  And here is the heart of our challenge:  over the last several centuries, a doctrine of scripture emerged in Christianity that insists that all scripture, every single word, was directly dictated by God, and is inerrant in every detail.  This belief emerged as a response to the questioning of religious authority from those who held that human reason alone was the most reliable pathway to truth.  So a doctrine of scripture emerged that enshrined the literal words of scripture as inerrant and as the sole authority on all matters.

This view still dominates much of global Christianity today.  It also strongly influences more than a few members of the Community of Christ who have adopted it from the larger religious culture.  However, that doctrine, that view of scripture is not how scripture was understood in Christianity since its birth.  It’s not how Jesus Christ used and viewed scripture.  And it is not how the community of Christ officially views scripture today.

The church affirms that scripture is inspired, indispensable, essential to our knowledge of God, and the Gospel.  In addition, we believe that scripture should be interpreted responsibly, through informed study, guided by the Holy Spirit working in and through the church.  Scripture was formed by the community of faith to shape the community of faith, therefore, interpreting scripture is the constant work of the faith community.  Community of Christ also stresses, that all scripture must be interpreted through the lens of God’s most decisive revelation in Jesus Christ

So if portions of scripture don’t agree with our fullest understanding, of the meaning of the revelation of God in Christ, as illuminated by the Holy Spirit, and discerned by the faith community, the teachings and vision of Christ take precedence.  This principle applies to all of our books of Scripture, especially any passages by some to categorically assign to God’s disfavor, or negative characteristics, or secondary roles to others.

This is why our belief in continuing revelation is so important.  This belief keeps us open to yet more light and truth so we can grow and understand of God’s supreme will as revealed in Jesus Christ.  Doctrine and Covenants 163:70 states, “Scripture, prophetic guidance, knowledge and discernment must walk hand in hand to reveal the true will of God.”  Follow this pathway, which is the way of the living Christ, and you will discover more than sufficient light for the journey ahead.”

I find tremendous agreement with the CoC position.  What are your thoughts?

For those who don’t know the origins of the Book of Abraham, Joseph claims to have translated the Book of Abraham from some Egyptian papyrus that he purchased from a person exhibiting Egyptian artifacts.  The papyrus were originally believed to have perished in a fire, though some of these scrolls were actually discovered in 1967, and translated by Egyptologists.  The translation has no resemblance to the Book of Abraham, and seems to be a sort of funeral scroll.  Therefore, some people charge that the Book of Abraham is really a fraud.  Even if this is a fraud, how does this explain the similarities to the Jewish Midrash, and the Koran?

To counter these claims,  Hugh Nibley notes that not all of the papyrus was found.  Perhaps there were some funeral scrolls mixed in with the Book of Abraham, and perhaps the real Book of Abraham that Joseph translated was not found.  Many critics scoff at this claim.

However, I have also been learning about the Gospel of Judas.  Scholars have known for centuries that a gospel attributed to Judas existed, because of a reference by an ancient Christian priest named Saint Ireneaus in 180.  The Christian canon did not exist in the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries, and St Ireneaus was of the first Christian leaders to try to create a canon of Christian writings.  He was one of the first to make the claim that there should be four gospels, and that many of the other gospels (at least 50 at the time) that were in existence at the time were false.  He specifically mentioned the Gospel of Judas as an especially dubious heresy.

Until recently nobody knew the Gospel of Judas existed.  Some Egyptian papyrus was discovered in 1978, and shopped on the black market for many years.  (It was actually advertised in the classified ads in the New York Times, and sold or stolen several times on the black market.)  There was even a National Geographic special announcing the discovery of the Gospel of Judas in 2006.

The discovery is very interesting, and the ancient document was written in an ancient form of Egyptian, called Coptic.  (Is this “reformed Egyptian”?)  The Coptic Christian Church still exists today, and dates from this early time period.  The copy discovered isn’t quite as old at Ireneaus, but dates to about the 1600 years ago.  It’s not quite as old as Ireneaus, but it certainly is ancient, and might be the same gospel he was referring to.  Ireneaus was talking about a Greek text, but he Gospel of Judas is probably a Coptic translation of the original Greek text.  (You may want to learn more about Gnosticism, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Nag Hammadi Library from my previous post on this.)

Prior to the National Geographic special, rumors that the Gospel of Judas had been found were rampant among the academic community.  The book was mixed up with several other books (apparently these ancient Egyptians were trying to conserve papyrus), many of which had nothing to do with spiritual subjects.  Someone apparently leaked a photograph of some of these papyri on the internet, and most scholars were of the opinion that the Gospel of Judas did not really exist.  The internet photograph claimed that the writings were the Gospel of Judas, but the translation was obviously of another book.  So, the Gospel of Judas find was deemed a hoax.

However, National Geographic obtained the papyrus, and had some modern scholars translate it.  Sure enough, the internet photographs were genuine, but only contained a portion of the entire papyrus.  The Gospel of Judas, was mixed in with some other writings, and it is an extremely important and interesting find in ancient Christian writings, because it shows a much greater diversity of Christian thought.  The Gospel of Judas is a Gnostic text, which was a competing form of Christianity, and was just as big or bigger in some parts of the Roman Empire.  When Constantine converted to Christianity, he converted to Orthodox Christianity, and then set about persecuting the Gnostics.  Eventually the persecution forced them out of existence.

So, I want to quote from Bart Ehrmann’s book called The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot.  Bart is a professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and participated in the translation of this lost gospel.  I just found some of the experiences with the Gospel of Judas as strikingly similar to Nibley’s theory about the Book of Abraham.  From page 67,

In chapter 1, I described my trip to Geneva in December 2004.  There I laid eyes on the Gospel of Judas for the first time.  I was obviously elated by the possibilities.  But as I returned from my trip I had more questions than answers.  I had looked over some pages of the Coptic text but had no opportunity to study and translate them.  What could be found on the pages I had seen?

…page 68

While still thrilled by the prospects, I found a discussion on the Internet that made my heart sink.

There is a Dutch blogger name Michel van Rijn who runs a very peculiar web site that specializes in debunking claims about modern art and ancient artifacts.  Van Rijn had gotten wind of the Gospel of Judas story, tracked down some leads, and learned that National Geographic was planning to spend considerable time and effort promoting the release of the document and its translation-and presumably would make a lot of money off it.  Van Rijn decided to explode the entire operation by publishing all the surviving materials before National Geographic itself had a chance to do so.

Van Rijn found an American scholar, Charlie Hedrick-a New Testament scholar I have known and liked for years-who claimed to have photographs of the Gospel of Judas and to have already made preliminary translations of them.  In order to squash any speculation about the Gospel, and to beat National Geographic to the punch, van Rijn published the photographs and the translations.  When I read them, I was massively disappointed.

The first text appeared to have nothing to do with Judas and Jesus.  It was a Gnostic document whose main figure was someone called Allogenes, who prays to God and hears God’s answer.  The text had Gnostic characteristics, and it would be of some limited interest to scholars of Gnosticism.  But as far as Judas and Jesus were concerned, it was a complete bust.

It is amazing how even those of us who teach for a living fail to practice what we preach.  Every semester in my undergraduate courses at Chapel Hill I have to tell my students not to trust everything they find on the Internet, since anyone can publish anything there, and there is often no way of knowing if the source is credible or bogus.  In this particular case, not having followed my own advice, I was completely taken in.

What I didn’t know at the time, but eventually came to realize, is that Hedrick had translated the wrong text.

My first indication that something was amiss came in July 1, 2005.  I was in New York on other business and had set up a lunch date at the Harvard Club with Herb Krosney, whom I mentioned earlier as the investigative journalist who had originally tracked down the Gospel of Judas, found that it was owned now by the Maecenas Foundation in Geneva, interested National Geographic in the story, and more or less single-handedly pushed the story forward-leading eventually to my hurried trip to Geneva six months before.  Over lunch in July I expressed my real frustration that the whole story was soon to collapse on itself, that there was not in fact much of a story at all, because I had read the Hedrick translation and frankly couldn’t understand why National Geographic was still interested in pursuing the matter.

Herb knew what was actually in the text, but he was not at liberty to give me all the details.  With a twinkle in his eye, he suggested that I not believe everything I read on the Internet (the advice I give students just about every week).  But I persisted; I had seen the photographs of the Coptic pages, they looked similar in quality to the pages I had seen in Geneva, I had seen Hedrick’s transcription of the pages, and I had checked his translation.  There just wasn’t much there.  All Herb could do was throw out a tantalizing hint: maybe Hedrick was translating a different part of the book.

It was only later that I realized what had happened.  As we will see in this chapter, when scholars first gained access to this manuscript and were able to determine its contents, they believed it contained fragmentary copies of three texts. Two of which were already known from earlier archaeological discoveries: the Letter of Peter to Philip and the First Apocalypse of James, copies of which had been discovered had been discovered among the writings of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945.  The third text was the gold mine: the Gospel of Judas.  But it was not until Florence Darbre, the expert in manuscript restoration, and Rodolphe Kasser, the eminent Coptologist responsible for editing and translation the text, had worked on the manuscript for three years that they realized what no one-including van Rijn and Hedrick-had before suspected.  The final part of the manuscript contained not just one document-the Gospel of Judas-but two.  The other one was a fragmentary copy of an otherwise unknown Gnostic treatise about this figure Allogenes.  Hedrick had assumed that his photographs were from the Gospel of Judas.  They weren’t.  They were from a different text.  This changed things drastically.

…page 70

One of the strangest facts about archaeological discoveries of early Jewish and Christian manuscripts is that the most spectacular finds are almost never made by trained archaeologists.  Most of them are the result of pure serendipity.  Moreover, they are typically discovered by people who have no idea what it is they have discovered and no sense of their real worth.

…page 71 [formatting slightly changed]

The limestone box contained four different manuscripts in codex form (that is, they were books, not scrolls).  Later scholars would identify these ancient codices as follows.  None of them, except the Gospel of Judas codes, has yet been published or otherwise made public:

1.       A mathematical treatise, written in Greek

2.       A fragmentary copy of the Old Testament book of Exodus, also in Greek

3.       A fragmentary copy of some of the New Testament letters of the apostle Paul, written in Coptic

4.       The codex containing the Gospel of Judas (as I will explain later, we have the complete beginning and end of the Gospel, and much of the middle, but some portions have not been lost because of the rough handling of the manuscript after its discovery; about 10-15 percent of the text is now unrecoverable), along with three other fragmentary texts, all of them Coptic:

a.       The Letter of Peter to Philip (in a version slightly different from the one discovered at Nag Hammadi),

b.      The First Apocalypse of James (also different from the Nag Hammadi version),

c.       And the Gnostic treatise on Allogenes (which is a different work from the Nag Hammadi tractate that is entitled “Allogenes”)

The discovery of the Gospel of Judas, with the initial skepticism of its existence lends credibility to Nibley’s contention that the Book of Abraham might still be still missing, and that they were combined with other non-religious texts.  Since I have been reviewing Rough Stone Rolling again, I decided to see what Bushman had to say on the topic.  From pages 285-6,

…Michael H. Chandler, who arrived in Kirtland on July 3, 1835, with four mummies and some rolls of papyrus.  Something of an opportunist and promoter, Chandler had exhibited the artifacts in Cleveland in March and come to Kirtland, he said, because of Joseph Smiths translating powers.  Chandler’s account of the mummies is full of contradictions.  He claimed he had inherited the artifacts from his uncle, Antonio Lebolo.  Lebolo had indeed obtained Egyptian artifacts around 1820 and distributed the finds to various European museums before he died in 1830, but no mention of Chandler or mummies were made in Lebolo’s probate papers.  He had earlier arranged for a Trieste merchant to sell eleven mummies that were forwarded to New York, and probably Chandler purchased the artifacts in New York, thinking to exhibit them and then sell them.  On inspecting the papyri, Joseph announced that one rolls contained the writings of Abraham of Ur and another the writings of Joseph of Egypt.  Excited by this discovery, he encouraged some of the Kirtland Saints to purchase four mummies and the papyri for $2,400, a huge sum when money was desperately needed for other projects.

…

Joseph Smith’s Book of Abraham is best thought of as an apocryphal addition to the Genesis story of Abraham, in the same vein as the Enoch passages in the Book of Moses.  Characteristically, Joseph’s translated account did not repeat the familiar biblical stories, instead expanding on a few verses about Abraham’s origins in Ur of the Chaldees, adding material not mentioned in the Bible.  The published version contained two chapters giving an account of Abraham’s ordeal in Ur and his departure for Canaan and Egypt.

… page 290

The Abraham texts gave Joseph another chance to let his followers try translating.  While working on the Book of Mormon in 1829, Joseph invited Oliver Cowdery to translate: he tried and failed.  Now with the Egyptian papyri before them, Joseph again let the men with the greatest interest in such undertakings-Cowdery, William W. Phelps, Warren Parrish, and Frederick G. Williams-attempt translations.  Parrish was told he “shall see much of my ancient records, and shall know of hiden things, and shall be endowed with a knowledge of hiden languages.”

Through the fall of 1835, the little group made various attempts.  “This after noon labored on the Egyptian alphabet, in company with [brothers] O. Cowdery and W. W. Phelps,” Joseph’s journal notes.  They seem to have copied lines of Egyptian from the papyrus and worked out stories to go with the text.  Or they wrote down an Egyptian character and attempted various renditions.  Joseph apparently had translated the first two chapters of Abraham-through chapter 2, verse 18, in the current edition-and the would-be translators matched up hieroglyphs with some of his English sentences.  Their general method can be deduced from a revelation given to Oliver Cowdery after he failed to translate the gold plates:  “You must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right, I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you.”  One can imagine these men staring at the characters, jotting down ideas that occurred to them, hoping for a burning confirmation.  They tried one approach after another.  Joseph probably threw in ideas of his own.  Eventually, they pulled their work together into a collection they called “Grammar & A[l]phabet of the Egyptian Language,” written in the hands of Phelps and Parrish.

Of all the men working on the papyri, only Joseph produced a coherent text.  What was going on as he translated?  For many years, Mormon assumed that he sat down with the scrolls, looked at each Egyptian word, and by inspiration understood its meaning in English.  He must have been reading from a text, so Mormons thought, much as a conventional translator would do, except the words came by revelation rather than out of his own learning.  In 1967, that view of translation suffered a blow when eleven scraps of the Abraham papyri, long since lost and believed to have been burned, were discovered in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and given to Latter-day Saint leaders in Salt Lake City.  Color pictures were soon printed and scholars went to work.  The texts were thought to be papyri with his translation, and the same pictures appeared on the museum fragments.  Moreover, some of the characters from the Egyptian grammar appeared on the fragments.  The translation of these texts by expert Egyptologists would finally prove or disprove Joseph’s claims to miraculous translating powers.  Would any of the language correspond to  the text in his Book of Abraham?  Some Mormons were crushed when the fragments turned out to be rather conventional funerary texts placed with mummified bodies, in this case Hôr’, to assure continuing life as an immortal god.  According to Egyptologists, nothing on the fragments resembled Joseph’s account of Abraham.

Some Mormon scholars, notably Hugh Nibley, doubt that the actual texts for Abraham and Joseph have been found.  The scraps from the Metropolitan Museum do not fit the description Joseph Smith gave of long, beautiful scrolls.  At best the remnants are a small fraction of the originals, with no indication of what appears on the lost portions.  Nonetheless, the discovery prompted a reassessment of the Book of Abraham.  What was going on while Joseph “translated” the papyri and dictated text to a scribe?  Obviously, he was not interpreting the hieroglyphics like an ordinary scholar.  As Joseph saw it, he was working by inspiration-that had been clear from the beginning.  When he “translated” the Book of Mormon, he did not read from the gold plates; he looked into the crystals of the Urim and Thummim, or gazed at the seerstone.  The words came by inspiration, not by reading the characters on the plates.  By analogy, it seemed likely that the papyri had been an occasion for receiving a revelation rather than a word-for-word interpretation of the hieroglyphics as in ordinary translations.  Joseph translated Abraham as ne had the characters on the gold plates, by knowing the meaning without actually knowing the plates’ language.  Warren Parish, his clerk, said, “I have set by his side and penned down the translation of the Egyptian Hieroglyphicks as he claimed to receive it by direct inspiration of heaven.”  When Chandler arrived with the scrolls, Joseph saw the papyri and inspiration struck.  Not one to deny God’s promptings of Abraham and Joseph.  The whole thing was miraculous, and to reduce Joseph’s translation to some quasi-natural process, some concluded, was folly.

The peculiar fact is that the results were not entirely out of line with the huge apocryphal literature on Abraham.  His book of Abraham picked up themes found in texts like the Book of Jasher and Flavius Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews.  In these extrabiblical stories, Abraham’s father worshiped idols, people tried to murder Abraham because of his resistance, and Abraham was learned in astronomy-all features of Joseph Smith’s narrative.  Josephus says, for example, that Abraham delivered “the science of astronomy” to the Egyptians, as does Joseph’s Abraham.  The parallels are not exact; the Book of Abraham was not a copy of any of the apocryphal texts.  In the Book of Jasher, Abraham destroys the idols of King Nimrod with a hatchet and is thrown into a furnace; Joseph’s Abraham is bound on a bedstead.  The similarities are far from complete, but the theme of resisting the king’s idolatry and an attempted execution followed by redemption by God are the same.  The parallels extend to numerous small details.

Joseph may have heard apocryphal stories of Abraham, although the Book of Jasher was not published in English until 1829 and not in the United States until 1840.  A Bible dictionary published by the American Sunday School Union summed up many of these apocryphal elements.  Whether Joseph knew of alternate accounts of Abraham or not, he created an original narrative that echoed apocryphal stories without imitating them.  Either by revelation, as his followers believed, or by some instinctive affinity for antiquity, Joseph made his own late-and unlikely-entry in the long tradition of extrabiblical narratives about the great patriarch.

…page 293

In light of Joseph’s language study, the Egyptian grammar appears as an awkward attempt to blend a scholarly approach to language with inspired translation.

So, what do you make of Nibley’s contention?  Is it plausible?

“Men realize that they are only allocated a certain number of spoken words in their lifetime, so being of a cautious nature, they choose not to waste words on book discussions …”

So, a few days after reading this article, imagine my surprise when I got invited to a book club. My wife is in 2 book clubs, so I figured this might be interesting. My friend wanted to have the book club focus on Mormon History, which sounded intriguinging to me. Our first meeting was about 2 weeks ago, and was attended ONLY by men. It was a fun meeting. Our first book to read is Sidney Rigdon: A Portrait of Religious Excess, by Richard Van Wagoner.

So, I thought I’d give you some updates on the book so far. It starts out a little slow, and talks about Sidney’s early ministry as a Reformed Baptist preacher. He meets Alexander Campbell, and his congregation becomes affiliated with the Campbellites, which later became known as the Disciples of Christ. Parley Pratt, also a Reformed Baptist and acquaintance of Rigdon, along with Oliver Cowdery first introduced Rigdon to the Book of Mormon in late 1830. Sidney was aware of the “Golden Bible”, and was skeptical of initial reports that he had heard about in the newspaper. After reading it, he found many similarities in the BoM as he held in his own religious beliefs, and urged his entire congregation to convert. Of course this upset Campbell, and there was much acrimony between them after this time.

Rigdon finally met the prophet Joseph Smith in Dec 1830, and helped work on the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible. I found the following passage from the book quite interesting on page 72.

…Although Mormon usage designates this Bible revision as the Joseph Smith Translation (JST), ancient manuscripts were not used, nor were Smith and Rigdon familiar with foreign languages. From Smith’s description of the process the procedure was an “inspired version”, not a translation.

Between 1777 and 1833 more than 500 separate editions of the Bible or New Testament were published in the United States. Many of these were revisions of the King James Version (1611), containing modernizations of language, paraphrases, and alternate readings based on comparisons of Greek and Hebrew. Even Rigdon’s classically trained mentor, Alexander Campbell, had issued his own translation in 1826. Although Rigdon was not involved with the project, he was familiar with it.

Alexander Campbell had heartfelt reverence for the Bible but no special respect for the King James Version, being too well-grounded in first-century Greek to accept 1611 English as inviolable. As a basis for his personal interpretation of sacred writings, Campbell used renderings of the first four gospels published by George Campbell in Edinburgh in 1778, James MacKnight’s translation of the Epistles, published first in London in 1795, and the translation of Acts and Revelations by Phillip Doddridge, first published in London in 1776. Campbell made various emendations, added a preface, and included 100 pages of critical notes and appendices. As a wealthy farmer, he was able to publish his new edition from his own printing office in Buffaloe, Virginia.

I found it interesting that so many of Joseph’s contemporaries were engaged in translating the Bible, though Joseph’s Inspired Version is definitely quite different from these other translations.

I want to point out some interesting things from his article–questions which Mormons should also start asking.  You can see the full article here.

What’s the difference, anyway, between baptising the dead and baptising babies? A tiny infant will have as much understanding as a dead person — none at all — of the complex philosophical belief-system it’s being inducted into when baptised, say, a Catholic. Transubstantiation? There’s daily communicants go to their deaths without any clear understanding of the concept. So what chance the mewling tot?

Indeed, given that all Christian Churches believe that the soul lives on after death and retains understanding and consciousness of self, doesn’t it make more sense to baptise dead adults than live babies?

Apart from which, if the Catholic bishops hold that the beliefs of the Mormons are pure baloney (as they must), and their rituals therefore perfectly meaningless, how can it matter to them what mumbo-jumbo Mormons might mutter over Catholic cadavers?

…

Let’s look at the facts as understood by the early followers of Christ. For more than 300 years after the Crucifixion, baptism of the dead was widely accepted, its biblical basis located in 1 Corinthians 15, 29: “Otherwise, what shall they do who are baptised for the dead if the dead rise not again at all? Why are they then baptised for them.” In other words, a deceased person could be baptised by proxy: otherwise, how could such a person be included in the Resurrection? A good question.

The radical Cerinthians and the Marcionites were especially energetic baptisers of the dead. It was to wrong-foot these sects, seen as competitors with the official Church at a time when it was consolidating its position as the State religion of the Roman Empire, that the Synods of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) voted, after bitter debate, to condemn the practice.

He makes the case that the decision to stop baptism for the dead was to marginalize these other Christian sects.  At this point, I wanted to learn more about this practice.  I was aware of the 1 Corinthians reference, but didn’t know that the practice went on for 4 centuries.  So, I decided to see what I could find on this.

John A. Tvedtnes, a Hebrew and early Christian scholar at BYU, writes:

Check out my posts on Marcionism and Gnosticism to learn more about these movements.  Here’s another post on Gnosticism and another on Montanism.  (My 2 gnostic posts are ranked #2 and #8 of my most viewed posts–funny because there aren’t many comments on them.)  There’s also an interesting link to Barry Bickmore’s site and Jeff Lindsay’s site.

Finally, I like his reasoning here.

What if Mormons are right and Catholics and Protestants wrong?

In that scenario, shouldn’t all members of all other religions be literally eternally grateful to the Mormons for sharing their saving grace even unto and after death?

If, on the other hand, it isn’t the Mormons at all, those who turn out to have been right can wave a merry farewell to the crestfallen followers of Brigham Young as they trundle downwards to their eternal comeuppance.

What’s the problem?

Well, for those of you who desire to join in an online Sunday School class, a friend of mine started a website a few years ago called LDS Sunday School.  He was good at updating it a few years ago, but has been having a hard time updating it.  It is a wiki, similar to a Wikipedia, so anybody can edit so long as they register at the site.

As some of you know, I had been grousing last year about how bored I was in Sunday School.  So, I am going to register and start trying to submit helpful information.  This year’s study is the Doctrine and Covenants.  If only I could get internet access at church….

I will also add that there is a Virtual Priesthood/RS lesson at Mormon Matters.  The website also allows for these lessons, so if you want to add to this website or contribute to Mormon Matters, there are some online options as well.

Today happens to be the first day of Hanukkah.  It is a celebration of the freedom of the Jews from the Greeks, which happened in 165 BC.  The story is told in the Book of 1 and 2 Maccabees, which is in the Catholic Bible.  Jews and Protestants do not consider Maccabees as scripture.

After the exile of the Jews in the days of Jeremiah (around 600 BC), the Jews were dominated by the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Greeks.  During the reign of Nehemiah, the temple was rebuilt.  It was during the time of Alexander the Great that the land of Israel was conquered by the Greeks. In 175 BCE Antiochus IV Epiphanes was the successor, and he upset the Jews greatly when he attempted to put a statue of Zues there and offer pig sacrifices, among other things.

The Jews revolted under the leadership of Mattathias, and his son Judas Maccabeus, finally being successful in 165 BC.  The Jews enjoyed independence for about 100 years, until King Herod led a Roman contingent to conquer Israel again.  This is the same Herod who was alive at Jesus birth.

The temple was rededicated, but they only had one days’ worth of oil for the celebration.  Miraculously, the lamp stayed lit for 8 days, which was long enough for them to get some more oil.  This is why the Menorah has 8 outer candles, and a raised one in the center.  The Hanukkah celebration also lasts 8 days.

The re-dedication took place around December, which is why it is so often associated with Christmas.  The Jews have a different calendar, based on the Lunar year, and having 12 or 13 months, depending on the calculations.  That is why Hanukkah can occur as early as November.  All other holidays can similarly change months due to this strange calculation.  In essence, the Jews have a leap month every 3, 7, and 10 years to make up for their calendar.

More info can be found at Jewfaq.org or on Wikipedia.  Has anyone celebrated Hanukkah?  Happy Hanukkah!

William Dever, from the University of Arizona, is one of my favorite scholars.  Let me quote from the PBS Article:

The way Dever sees it, “The Bible’s Buried Secrets” plays it straight down the middle, and that may raise unsettling questions for literalists as well as those who see the Bible as a collection of fairy tales.

“The film’s going to get it from both sides,” Dever said.

The further you go back in the Bible, the harder it is to find archaeology that supports the Bible.  The show will bother many Bible Believers with assertions such as

The Land of Canaan was not taken over by conquest – rather, the Israelites actually might have been Canaanites who migrated into the highlands and created a new identity for themselves. “Joshua really didn’t fight the Battle of Jericho,” Dever said.

Other assertions will bother people who don’t believe in the Bible.  Up until recently, there hasn’t been much evidence before about 600-700 BC.  Many Bible critics claim that characters such as David, Solomon, Moses, Abraham, etc. are mythical figures.  However, 2 recent discoveries dispute this assertion.

“The Bible’s Buried Secrets” includes a segment highlighting the work of the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary’s Ron Tappy, who is part of a team studying an inscription at Israel’s Tel Zayit archaeological site. The inscription hints that a well-organized state was functioning in the 10th century B.C., with Jerusalem as its seat.

Yet another inscription at Tel Dan, from the ninth century B.C., appears to refer to the “House of David” – although that interpretation is disputed. Such evidence suggests that King David and King Solomon were historical figures who matched up with the biblical accounts.

There is an online link so you can view the show.  I believe in the Bible, as well as the Book of Mormon.  My point is this:  people who are concerned about the Book of Mormon, should look more closely at the Biblical similarities.  If one believes that Abraham and Moses were historical figures, despite the complete lack of archaeological evidence, then one should consider the historical possibility of Lehi and Nephi, despite the lack of archeaological evidence.

So, what do you make of it?